Addiction
by Darren's Wings
Summary: In desperation, Palin writes a letter. Please R&R!


**A/N: I didn't beta or read through it or anything...but I hope you like it! Try to guess who the letter is to. 'Tisn't hard!**

The world spins faster and faster around me. It changes in this Age of Mortals more than any other. Yet it changes little. Yet we change more.

They say the Gray Knights changed me. They say it was the destruction of the Academy.

But it was the loss of magic.

They say I am someone else. Usha says I should stop worrying away at the holes in my soul. But she doesn't understand. Few understand. Sometimes, I don't even understand.

I want to stand still in the hurtling world. I don't want to watch the face of Krynn change and revolve, spin and mutate. I want to feel the magic again. The fire in my veins. The touch of the gods.

Where did the magic go? It's been there so long.

Even after Solinari and his cousins left, I've had some shadow of the magic. An echo of its sweet song.

But it has never been the same.

The old magic was the painter's master piece. This magic is his replica—the same, but different, more distant, a flaw here and there, slowly fading to failure.

Before the gods left, the magic was dependable, always there. You could drink the magic, let it flow through you, filling you with ecstasy. Even as the world spins, when the balance is disturbed, the burning desire for the magic, the magic itself, was there.

Now the gods are gone. They abandoned us, this time for real. They'll never come back. We'll never feel the same magic again. Just this faded memory of magic, the overused magic from objects of the Fourth Age.

Usha pretends she doesn't notice I am elsewhere, pretends she doesn't leave me alone at night because I no longer love her the way I used to. Pretends she doesn't care.

But she cries for me like I cry for the magic. Cries because her beloved Palin only cares for the magic.

Is this how it felt? When you left the Abyss and no tingling warmth, intoxicating flow through you veins greeted you, that drive, that compulsive needs, to taste the magic again? When you nearly died at Skullcap, when you doubted your magical strength, when Crysania watched you and almost died for you? When you could loose yourself in her touch, pretending the magic caressed you instead?

Crysania understood. Usha doesn't. I find no solace in her.

I only find that in magic, which remains elusive, like water filtering through my fingers as I try to drink. What lust is in that?

Once we mages were strong, once we cared for each other and built foundations for future mages. Once we placed brick of study upon mortared brick to build upon that strength, that knowledge, to guard against the distrust we received from the rest of the churning, spinning world.

Now we are like starving rats who live in an empty world, craving for light, for our hunger to die. When we find some tiny strand of magic, an artifact from the Fourth Age, we dive upon it, fighting, scrambling for even a memory of the luster. We turn on each other in hunger. We tear one another apart for a little bit of something, anything, that will help satisfy that need and desire.

Usha never understood it. But you would. If you were alive. That's why I'm writing this letter. I need you. I need you as I never have before.

-

It's as if I'm starving and cannot eat.

No plants grow in this desolate land, and the animals would rather eat me than feed me.

It's as if I'm choking and cannot breathe.

The loss of magic presses upon my mouth, my nose, and my lungs, driving away the breath.

It is as if I'm thirsty and cannot drink.

As if a few steps away the water flows, just out of my chained reach, tantalising, taunting.

If these chains could break, if the gods would return, I'd drink and never be thirsty again.

-

Through it all the world shifts, changes, spins. The river f time flows, unhindered, bringing history to its completion. A completion without magic. We mages' desires tears us apart.

Uncle, I don't know what to do.

-Palin Majere to Raistlin Majere; a letter he never sent

**A/N: Loved it? Hated it? Wasn't sure? Review and tell me what you think! Reviews loved and cherished, flame or no flame! **

**-Wings-**


End file.
